Plutarch’s Lives

Comparison of Demetrius and Antony

Translated by John Dryden
and
Revised by Arthur Hugh Clough

As both are great examples of the
vicissitudes of fortune, let us first consider in what way they
attained their power and glory. Demetrius heired a kingdom already won
for him by Antigonus, the most powerful of the Successors, who, before
Demetrius grew to be a man, traversed with his armies and subdued the
greater part of Asia. Antony’s father was well enough in other
respects, but was no warrior, and could bequeath no great legacy of
reputation to his son, who had the boldness, nevertheless, to take upon
him the government, to which birth gave him no claim, which had been
held by Cæsar, and became the inheritor of his great labors. And such
power did he attain, with only himself to thank for it, that, in a
division of the whole empire into two portions, he took and received
the nobler one; and, absent himself, by his mere subalterns and
lieutenants often defeated the Parthians, and drove the barbarous
nations of the Caucasus back to the Caspian Sea. Those very things that
procured him ill-repute bear witness to his greatness. Antigonus
considered Antipater’s daughter Phila, in spite of the disparity of her
years, an advantageous match for Demetrius. Antony was thought
disgraced by his marriage with Cleopatra, a queen superior in power and
glory to all, except Arsaces, who were kings in her time. Antony was so
great as to be thought by others worthy of higher things than his own
desires.

As regards the right and justice of their aims at empire, Demetrius
need not be blamed for seeking to rule a people that had always had a
king to rule them. Antony, who enslaved the Roman people, just
liberated from the rule of Cæsar, followed a cruel and tyrannical
object. His greatest and most illustrious work, his successful war with
Brutus and Cassius, was done to crush the liberties of his country and
of his fellow-citizens. Demetrius, till he was driven to extremity,
went on, without intermission, maintaining liberty in Greece, and
expelling the foreign garrisons from the cities; not like Antony, whose
boast was to have slain in Macedonia those who had set up liberty in
Rome. As for the profusion and magnificence of his gifts, one point for
which Antony is lauded, Demetrius so far outdid them, that what he gave
to his enemies was far more than Antony ever gave to his friends.
Antony was renowned for giving Brutus honorable burial; Demetrius did
so to all the enemy’s dead, and sent the prisoners back to Ptolemy with
money and presents.

Both were insolent in prosperity, and abandoned themselves to
luxuries and enjoyments. Yet it cannot be said that Demetrius, in his
revelings and dissipations, ever let slip the time for action;
pleasures with him attended only the superabundance of his ease, and
his Lamia, like that of the fable, belonged only to his playful,
half-waking, half-sleeping hours. When war demanded his attention, his
spear was not wreathed with ivy, nor his helmet redolent of unguents;
he did not come out to battle from the women’s chamber, but, hushing
the bacchanal shouts and putting an end to the orgies, he became at
once, as Euripides calls it, “the minister of the unpriestly Mars;”
and, in short, he never once incurred disaster through indolence or
self-indulgence. Whereas Antony, like Hercules in the picture where
Omphale is seen removing his club and stripping him of his lion’s skin,
was over and over again disarmed by Cleopatra, and beguiled away, while
great actions and enterprises of the first necessity fell, as it were,
from his hands, to go with her to the seashore of Canopus and
Taphosiris, and play about. And in the end, like another Paris, he left
the battle to fly to her arms; or rather, to say the truth, Paris fled
when he was already beaten; Antony fled first, and, to follow
Cleopatra, abandoned his victory.

There was no law to prevent Demetrius from marrying several
wives; from the time of Philip and Alexander, it had become usual with
Macedonian kings, and he did no more than was done by Lysimachus and
Ptolemy. And those he married he treated honorably. But Antony, first
of all, in marrying two wives at once, did a thing which no Roman had
ever allowed himself; and then he drove away his lawful Roman wife to
please the foreign and unlawful woman. And so Demetrius incurred no
harm at all; Antony procured his ruin by his marriage. On the other
hand, no licentious act of Antony’s can be charged with that impiety
which marks those of Demetrius. Historical writers tell us that the
very dogs are excluded from the whole Acropolis, because of their
gross, uncleanly habits. The very Parthenon itself saw Demetrius
consorting with harlots and debauching free women of Athens. The vice
of cruelty, also, remote as it seems from the indulgence of voluptuous
desires, must be attributed to him, who, in the pursuit of his
pleasures, allowed, or to say more truly, compelled the death of the
most beautiful and most chaste of the Athenians, who found no way but
this to escape his violence. In one word, Antony himself suffered by
his excesses, and other people by those of Demetrius.

In his conduct to his parents, Demetrius was irreproachable.
Antony gave up his mother’s brother, in order that he might have leave
to kill Cicero, this itself being so cruel and shocking an act, that
Antony would hardly be forgiven if Cicero’s death had been the price of
this uncle’s safety. In respect of breaches of oaths and treaties, the
seizure of Artabazes, and the assassination of Alexander, Antony may
urge the plea which no one denies to be true, that Artabazes first
abandoned and betrayed him in Media; Demetrius is alleged by many to
have invented false pretexts for his act, and not to have retaliated
for injuries, but to have accused one whom he injured himself.

The achievements of Demetrius are all his own work. Antony’s
noblest and greatest victories were won in his absence by his
lieutenants. For their final disasters they have both only to thank
themselves; not, however, in an equal degree. Demetrius was deserted,
the Macedonians revolted from him: Antony deserted others, and ran away
while men were fighting for him at the risk of their lives. The fault
to be found with the one is that he had thus entirely alienated the
affections of his soldiers; the other’s condemnation is that he
abandoned so much love and faith as he still possessed. We cannot
admire the death of either, but that of Demetrius excites our greater
contempt. He let himself become a prisoner, and was thankful to gain a
three years’ accession of life in captivity. He was tamed like a wild
beast by his belly, and by wine; Antony took himself out of the world
in a cowardly, pitiful, and ignoble manner, but, still in time to
prevent the enemy having his person in their power.